By 2007 there were an estimated 110 million distinct websites and some 30 billion web pages on the World Wide Web (web) accessible through the Internet; these numbers continue to grow rapidly with each day. Every website has a unique web address technically known as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) which appears as a string of routing numbers (e.g., 42.141.58.103). But such strings are difficult to recall so Internet users quickly developed a more mnemonic device known as domain names (e.g., www.example.com); such catchy domain name website addresses have become the public face of the URL so as to ease e-mail correspondence and general access to websites. In the past decade entrepreneurs and other business-oriented individuals discovered and began development of the incredible commercial opportunities residing in Internet accessed websites where barriers to and costs for transacting business are virtually non-existent for the motivated buyer. Once connected, it often becomes only a matter of choice or travel as to what to buy online or at a referred place of business. Entering an e-commerce website has become the virtual equivalent of going into a hardware store or restaurant; rarely does the buyer leave with nothing. This is particularly true if the website engages the buyer on a personal level with incentive or reward offerings in the form of effective, albeit virtual, marketeering. The real challenge facing business owners who have embraced e-commerce is getting the buyer to and through their virtual doorway, to their place of business by way of their web address. Essentially, for the business owner, getting their needle of a website found in the haystack of the web. A marketing method which aids buyers and sellers in circumventing this haystack problem is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/215,015 entitled “Method for Packet Facilitated E-commerce”.
However, another problem remains for the business owner who chooses to engage in e-commerce by direct packet marketeering. It is a problem not unique to direct packets but shared by all forms of advertising: how to measure the effectiveness of any advertising campaign and do so with minimal effort and at an affordable price. What advertising content, timing, audience, inducements, and a myriad of other factors work best together or are superior to another comparable campaign? The finest products and services go unnoticed, and worst, unsold, if the business owner fails to effectively advertise. Yet, measuring the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is very complex and very costly, easily taking more time, resources and monies than the advertising campaign itself. The skill level and effort required soon convinces the business owner any effort at effective advertising measurement is largely unknowable, undoable, and unprofitable. Left with no alternative, the requisite advertising budget is thus spent on traditional venues such as newspaper ads, radio spots, direct mailers, and the like where hoary statistical generalities and even vaguer surmises are substituted for any true measurements of effectiveness. The nature of e-commerce has the means to effectively measure advertising if a technique existed for gauging the effectiveness of a specific means that fishes out a buyer from the crowd and bring that buyer to and through the business owner's virtual shop door as a website.
Accordingly, a method for measuring comparative means that leads to and bridges the disconnect between buyer and website is required. Specifically, with regards to resealable packets of useful liquids distributed with advertising messages to foster the connect between buyer and website, a method is required whereby the business owner can at low-cost and minimal effort evaluate the effectiveness of any direct packet marketing strategy individually or comparatively. Further, the owner as vendor, armed with insight, can make important changes to better spend an always limited advertising budget. There is a significant need for such a straightforward method for measuring packet advertising effectiveness.